Homeless numbers rocket in US‏

By Jim Pence

Homeowners, struggling to deal with sharp increases in their adjustable mortgage payments, are being hit with a record number of foreclosure notices.
Alan Greenspan former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, said: “What we are observing in the last seven weeks is identical in many respects to what we saw in 1998, what we saw in the stock market crash of 1987.”
Countrywide Financial Corp plans to cut 12,000 jobs. I hope some of those that lose their jobs will be pissed off enough to expose the predatory lending practices of Countrywide Financial Corp., but I’m not holding my breath for that to occur.

A letter issued by Angelo Mozillo Chairman of Countrywide Financial and Dave Sambol, President, explaining all the layoffs at Countrywide Financial today. Here’s the most relevant excerpt.
As has always been the case in previous cycles when the market has shifted and our volumes and related revenues fell, we need to again adjust our organization by scaling back our operations and reducing our cost structure accordingly. Unfortunately, the only way to accomplish this is to make significant reductions in our workforce which we estimate to range between 10,000-12,000 employees (which includes reductions that we have already made). As of July 31, Countrywide employed more than 61,000 people. The areas primarily affected will be our production divisions, and the general and administrative support areas of the Company. Areas which we do not expect to be materially impacted by workforce reductions include our banking operations, our insurance businesses and our loan servicing operations, each of which are expected to continue growing in both the short-term and long-term. As noted above, the distributed retail unit of our Consumer Markets Division will continue to aggressively grow its sales force while adjusting its expense structure to the new reality of the marketplace.
Click here to read the entire letter.

Are You Ready For Inflation?

August 10, 2007
The Federal Reserve on Friday injected a total of $38 billion into the markets in three steps, which began with a $19 billion injection into the banking system, followed by a second addition of $16 billion and finally a third dose of $3 billion. The Fed on Thursday added $24 billion in temporary reserves. See full story.

Deja vu all over again?

In the early 1980s, under Reagan, regulatory changes took place that gave the S&L industry new powers and for the first time in history measures were taken to increase the profitability of S&Ls at the expense of promoting home ownership.
A history of the S&L situation can be found here:
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/s&l/
What is important to note about the S&L scandal is that it was the largest theft in the history of the world and US tax payers are who was robbed.
The problems occurred in the Savings and Loan industry as they relate to theft because the industry was deregulated under the Reagan/Bush administration and restrictions were eased on the industry so much that abuse and misuse of funds became easy, rampant, and went unchecked.
Additional facts on the Savings and Loan Scandal can be found here:
http://www.inthe80s.com/sandl.shtml
There are several ways in which the Bush family plays into the Savings and Loan scandal, which involves not only many members of the Bush family but also many other politicians that are still in office and still part of the Bush Jr. administration today. Jeb Bush, George Bush Sr., and his son Neil Bush have all been implicated in the Savings and Loan Scandal, which cost American tax payers over $1.4 TRILLION dollars.

How can George W. Bush say he supports the Troops when he is allowing the homes of their families, and friends to be foreclosed?